2024 was not a fertile year for European unicorns. Just 13 startups hit a billion-dollar valuation, compared to 69 in 2021 and 47 in 2022. Still, it was an improvement on 2023, when just seven joined the stable.
The return of megarounds helped. In 2024, 136 startups raised more than $100m, according to Sifted data — a long drop from the 241 picked up during the heady days of 2021, but an improvement on 2023 when just 86 startups raised more than $100m, according to Dealroom.
There were 10 investors which have backed two of this year’s 13 unicorns, according to Sifted analysis (although not all in 2024): Sequoia; DST Global; Baillie Gifford; Meritech Capital Partners; Exor Ventures; Kima Ventures; Nvidia; Frst Capital; Bpifrance; and Air Street Capital.
Poolside AI is the main meeting point for all those investors — with Bpifrance, DST Global, Frst and Nvidia all investing in the AI startup.
Meanwhile Meritech and Exor Ventures are the more persistent backers — both have followed on in up to three different rounds; Meritech backing Pigment in 2022, 2023 and 2024; and Exor Ventures following on in Wayve, investing in 2017 and 2020, and Newcleo (2021, 2022, 2024).
Just three investors backed more than one of the new unicorns in 2024:
- DST Global (Pennylane, Poolside AI)
- Meritech Capital (Pigment, EGYM)
- Nvidia (Wayve, Poolside AI)
So who are these new European unicorns?
Sifted lists them below, with the most recent first.
Lighthouse — UK
The final unicorn of the year, Lighthouse, provides software to hotels, and raised a $370m Series C led by KKR in November. The company says more than 70k hospitality providers have used its platform since launching in 2012, and it has more than 700 employees worldwide. It’s raised $470m to date.
Poolside AI — France
A rare AI startup that was founded in the US but moved its HQ to Europe, Poolside AI raised a $500m Series B in October at a reported $3bn valuation. The round was led by global investor Bain Capital Ventures; VC firm DST Global, as well as a number of enterprises such as Nvidia, HSBC Ventures, LG Technology Ventures and eBay Ventures also invested.
It’s raised $626m to date, according to Dealroom — despite not yet having launched a product. It’s building a GenAI model that can help developers write software code.
EGYM — Germany
Munich-based EGYM offers health and fitness institutions access to software and machines — from equipment that can provide personalised workouts for each user to mobile app packages. In September, it raised $200m at a $1bn+ valuation from consumer-focused investment firm L Catterton and US VC Meritech Capital.
It was founded in 2010, and has raised $582m to date, according to Dealroom.
Newcleo — France
It was a big year for nuclear power startup Newcleo, which hit unicorn status, raised multiple funding rounds and moved its holding company from the UK to France in order to tap into EU funding pools in a bid to close a €1bn equity round.
Founded in 2021, the company is developing lead-cooled small modular reactors (SMRs) fuelled with radioactive waste.
In May, it announced a first close of €87m, followed by a further €48m in September. It’s raised €535m to date, from investors including Italian pension fund Inarcassa, Italian industrial plant equipment manufacturer Walter Tosto, corporate venture fund Exor Ventures and French engineering consultancy company Ingérop.
Flo Health — UK
London-based period tracker Flo Health became Europe’s first femtech unicorn in July when it raised more than $200m from US growth investor General Atlantic.
The news caught more attention than the company perhaps expected: as people were quick to point out, Flo also became Europe’s first women’s health unicorn with an all-male founding team — a detail which sparked a backlash online.
“We firmly believe that women’s health has been critically overlooked, undervalued and underfunded for far too long,” Flo said in a statement to Sifted. “Our sincere hope is that Flo’s funding will inspire more investors to recognise the immense potential in this space.”
The company, which has now raised more than $290m, said it will use the funds to expand into new user segments like perimenopause and menopause and invest in R&D for AI-driven personalised insights tools.
Team.blue — Belgium
In July, Ghent-based team.blue raised €550m at a €4.8bn valuation in a round led by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, a global investment firm. The company, which helps small and medium-sized businesses in Europe with a range of digital solutions — from web hosting and website domains, to ecommerce and app solutions — says it has 3.3m customers.
Wayve — UK
In May, autonomous vehicle (AV) startup Wayve raised the largest round for an AI startup in Europe ever when it picked up $1.05bn from investors including SoftBank, Nvidia and Microsoft in a Series C round at an undisclosed (but $1bn+) valuation.
The startup is building software for AVs and said the fresh funding would be used to develop its technology and launch its first commercial products to car makers. In August, Uber made a strategic investment (of an undisclosed amount) into Wayve as an extension of the round.
Wayve is by far the best-funded AV startup in Europe — and along with several other players in the sector is making moves to commercialise its tech. Uber’s support, the company said, should help it “accelerate its work with global OEMs [car manufacturers]” and develop AVs that could be deployed by Uber in the future.
Pigment — France
Pigment provides enterprise customers with a platform that lets them visualise critical business data in real time, ranging from profit and revenue to burn rate and headcount.
It raised a $145m Series D led by US VC Iconiq Growth and hit a unicorn valuation in April this year, following a $77m raise the previous May.
The startup told Sifted in April that it was focusing on expanding its North American business and investing in AI. Pigment’s customers include UK consumer goods multinational Unilever, German pharmaceutical group Merck and US software company Datadog.
Mews — the Netherlands
Amsterdam-based Mews is a property management platform for hoteliers, which raised a $110m round in March to hit a valuation of $1.2bn. The round was led by Kinnevik and featured participation from Revaia, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Notion Capital and LGVP. In September, it raised a further €90m in debt financing from Vista Credit Partners to fund M&A.
Bending Spoons — Italy
Bending Spoons has built a suite of mobile apps for content creators — including photo-editing apps, motion graphics and typography apps. The company made a spree of acquisitions in 2024, buying file-transfer platform WeTransfer, electronic publishing platform Issuu, events platform Meetup, mobile app developer Mosaic Group, live streaming studio StreamYard and video platform Brightcove. It also owns note-taking app Evernote.
The Milan-based company became a unicorn after raising $155m in February, in a round led by Durable Capital Partners, which brought its valuation to $2.6bn. Founded in 2013, Bending Spoons was bootstrapped for six years before first tapping investors for cash in 2019. It’s since raised $635m, according to Dealroom.
Pennylane — France
Pennylane is an accounting platform founded in 2020 that’s designed to improve workflows between enterprises and accountants. It hit unicorn valuation after raising a €40m Series C in February, in an all-equity round led by UK investor DST Global, with participation from Sequoia.
The Series C took the startup’s total funding to $169m, according to Dealroom, and will be used to finance acquisitions as the company looks to expand its technology and services portfolio.
“What was at stake [with this Series C] was to have cash to do M&A,” CEO Arthur Waller told Sifted. “We have actors in front of us who have the money to acquire and we want to fight on equal terms. We want to be predators, not prey.”
DataSnipper — the Netherlands
DataSnipper is a platform that helps automate and speed up the auditing process for finance professionals. In February, it raised a €92m Series B led by Index Ventures which saw its valuation tick over the $1bn mark.
ElevenLabs — London / New York
Voice AI startup ElevenLabs has been on a wild ride for the past 24 months. It burst onto the European GenAI scene with text-to-speech and audio-to-audio language translation tech when it raised a $2m pre-seed in January 2023.
ElevenLabs followed that up with a $19m Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, GitHub founder Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, a former machine learning director at Apple, just half a year later. Six months after that it had bagged another $80m — co-led by Sequoia — and hit unicorn status at a $1.1bn valuation.
Editor’s note: A Sifted list published in July counted Cambridge, UK-based quantum company Quantinuum as a new European unicorn for 2024. We’ve decided to remove it from this full list of 2024 unicorns because its valuation topped $1bn as a result of the merger of two other companies, Cambridge Quantum and Honeywell.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/european-startup-unicorns-2024/
